ToolZ wrote:
This truly is the "Holy Grail" in Datsun circles. So how come none of us can get an answer?
Did they make only nine or twenty?
Why don´t they put it in to production now? (Fortunes to be made)
Are they going to do another limited re-run?
Can somebody "in the know" start an OS Giken thread and inform the plebs?
Kev, you have been pretty lucky with sponsorship this far.
Lets make it happen.
(I accept no responsibility for this post as I have been "on the sauce" since getting smoked by a Nissan Patrol today).
Ok, I'll put up what I know about it, which might not be that much
The TC24 head began development in the late 70s, and became available around 1980 I think. It did look like it had some features in common with the LY head and the S20 head, and was really, really expensive. Y1.2mil I think, which is like US$12,000 today, so imagine how expensive that was in real terms in the early 80s.
The number they made was very small, something along the lines of a dozen, but they were only intended to be a short-run. The moulds for the castings were mostly made of carved wood, and so you would only get a few goes out of the moulds before they were ruined, and OS Giken were never in a position to churn out lots and lots of them, they were made with low-production techniques and presumbly needed plenty of hand finishing afterwards, which all adds to the significant cost.
Why can't they start re-making them? Well over the years, plenty of interested parties have offered money to OS Giken for new TC24 heads, and OS-G have always said that the cost would be prohibitive, since thet would be more or less starting from scratch. The old moulds were unusable, so it's not like OS-G could just flick a switch and new TC24s would start rolling out of a machine and down a conveyor belt (if only)
More recently, it seems that OS-G has put out the word that they'd entertain offers for more TC24s, and I've heard rumours of a US$30,000 per head cost, but I can't confirm if that was originally from the horse's mouth. Last year, I was shown photos of TC24 castings sitting on a bench, which were supposedly a recent picture. In the pic, you can see 5 raw TC24 head castings. I dunno if they ever made it into completed heads and were sold into the Japanese market. And I certainly don't know if OS-G is in any position to crank out some more, but given the displayed TC24 head at SEMA last year, I would think that they probably are. Given the depressed state of the aftermarket industry in Japan right now, it would certainly help, but you would understand that OS-G would want to rack up a certain number of confirmed and prepaid orders first.
As for a sponsorship, if anyone from OS Giken is reading this, I can be reached via PM
but given the likely exotic pricetag, I would reckon that any new TC24s would just be for realy big-dollar builds, and OS Giken would just be wanting to shift a handful more, not a heap more.
_________________
datsunfreak wrote:
No Kev, you are eating a duck fetus.
